Dark
side obscured to visitors to
Laos By Melinda Boh
VIENTIANE - In 2007, Sompawn Khantisouk,
founder of the eco-tourism award winning Boat
Landing guesthouse, was forced into a car by men
in green uniforms as the sun fell into the
picturesque hills of Luang Nam Tha in northern
Laos. For months his distraught family searched
for him, including consultations with fortune
tellers, some of whom said they could sense he was
still alive. Five years later, he is still
disappeared and now widely presumed dead.
On December 15, 2012, internationally
respected activist Sombath Somphone was similarly
abducted by unknown assailants in the Lao capital
of Vientiane. The 62-year-old's erudition and
passion for participatory development issues
earned him a 2005 Magsaysay Award, widely viewed
as Asia's version of
the Nobel Prize. His wife,
once a senior UNICEF staffer, says she does not
know if her internationally respected spouse is
now dead or alive.
CCTV footage of his
abduction, staged with impunity on one of
Vientiane's major arteries, shows clear evidence
of police complicity. Officials have implausibly
denied involvement, claiming inexplicably that his
kidnapping may have been related to a personal or
business dispute. It is an open secret that
disappearances are commonplace in Laos, where
activists are frequently picked up on unspecified
offenses never to be seen again.
A
ceremony in Laos to honor Sombath was cancelled
after security police threatened his colleagues
and family. Protests and events lamenting and
calling for justice in his disappearance have been
staged by regional human-rights groups, including
in neighboring Thailand.
Laos'
authoritarian, communist-led government brooks no
dissent, with those who have dared to speak out,
including activists who unraveled a banner in
public calling for democracy, now languishing in
prison. Others who have been targeted by
authorities for their critiques and activism have
fled the country.
When formerly
military-ran Myanmar, also known as Burma,
imprisoned and abducted dissident citizens, the
global response to the abuses was sharp. Western
governments imposed punitive economic and
financial sanctions, while grass roots groups
campaigned against global travelers from putting
Myanmar on their itineraries. Despite similar
abuses in Laos, to date the global grass roots
response has been mostly muted, even with the
high-profile disappearances of Sompawn and
Sombath.
As international concern shifts
away from democratizing Myanmar, Laos' abuses
could receive greater attention. Yet while Lao
activists and dissidents languish in prison or
flee the country over fears of official reprisals,
a growing number of global tourists are descending
on the country, commonly referred to as "sleepy"
in the guidebooks many of them carry. Nearly three
million tourists visited Laos in 2012, a record
number for the landlocked country of six million.
Once closed to the outside world, the Lao
government now heavily promotes tourism to boost
its laggard local economy and international
credibility.
Tourism in Laos, however,
presents an ethical dilemma, similar to the one
travelers faced when deciding whether to travel to
Myanmar's previous iron-fisted military regime.
Laos, run by a committee of mostly stone-faced men
that espouse communist ideals but increasingly
practice market economics, use the same fear
tactics Myanmar's rulers used to crush dissent and
capture the lion's share of national resources.
Like Myanmar's generals, Laos' leaders are
now profiteering from a tourism boom through their
dominance of hotels and other tourism-related
infrastructure. Political elites have forced so
many locals out of the central city area of Luang
Prabang to corner the tourism market that temples
in the area are closing because the local
community is no longer sufficient to provide alms
to monks.
Laos is nonetheless set to host
the upcoming Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) Travel Forum from January 18-24,
with meetings to be held for regional tourism
ministers and ASEAN's Airlines, Hotel and
Restaurant and Travel Associations. CNN and CNBC,
international news channels that profit from
government-funded tourism advertising, are
scheduled on January 21 to host respectively lunch
and dinner for ministers and senior delegates.
No free press Laos lacks the
independent press-in-exile that fearlessly
reported attacks, disappearances, land grabs,
torture, and arbitrary detentions that typified
the old Myanmar and raised global concern.
Protests and cases of government impunity are
seldom if ever reported in Laos' state-monopolized
media. Foreign journalists rarely visit the
country; if they enter through official channels
they are supervised by government minders,
undermining their ability to report on true public
opinion.
Myanmar's Buddhist monk-led
Saffron Revolution in 2007 focused local and
international outrage against the previous
military government and was a testimony to that
country's radical and independent Buddhist clergy.
The Buddhist clergy in Laos, in contrast, formed
an early alliance with the Pathet Lao communists
and later renounced certain Buddhist precepts,
like impermanence, considered inconvenient to the
Party.
Drilled like the Lao people in
obedience, Lao monks, particularly those at the
top of the hierarchy, are subject to political
training. Laos thus has all the hallmarks of a
fear driven society but without Myanmar's alert
systems. The Lao government oppresses its' peoples
quietly, without fuss and with ruthless
efficiency.
Colorful indigenous highland
tribes, much loved by camera-toting travelers, are
increasingly dispossessed to make way for tourist
hotels and golf courses. Once healthy forest
communities now suffer from micronutrient
deficiencies and have become the focus for
international aid agency rescue programs as they
are relocated from fertile to barren lands. Those
who protest or make representations to government
officials are frequently arrested and detained.
For instance, Lao activist Sivanxay Phommarath has
been held incommunicado for three months for
organizing villagers in Khammouane province in a
land dispute.
Unlike Myanmar, Laos does
not have any charismatic oppositional figures like
Aung Sung Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate
and global pro-democracy icon. With no independent
media to present an alternative picture to the
mainstream view, the government has effectively
monopolized national public relations. Foreign
travel writers permitted into the country often
extol Laos' "untouched" and "sleepy" travel
destinations, feeding into the government's
tourism promotion campaign.
To be sure,
there is the occasional leak. Earlier in the year,
a leaked report showed that Laotian and Vietnamese
delegates eroded the recently revised ASEAN Human
Rights Charter, limiting its scope and
application. Weeks before Sombath's abduction, the
head of Swiss development agency Helvetas was
expelled from Laos for criticizing the government
over land disputes with local communities. After
her expulsion, other foreign organizations working
on land rights had their terms of reference
altered to remove all references to land on
government orders.
About five years ago,
global travelers "discovered" Laos. The New York
Times touted Laos as its top global travel
destination in 2008. Hillside paths now hold
backpackers eager to see "authentic" village life,
while at the same time ancestral lands are taken
for dams, plantations or golf courses. Elephants,
projected to be extinct soon in Laos, are now
ridden by sunburned travelers as their habitats
are stripped of trees by Lao and Vietnamese
military owned companies involved in tourism
development.
To these travelers, Laos is a
laid back, quiet place with quaint people, cheap
beer, and spectacular scenery. Behind that veneer
is a land out of the caricatures of 1950's and
1960's communist police states. Village sound
systems still blare in the early morning to wake
the masses with pro-government propaganda.
Government spies keep close tabs on foreign
residents and visitors, while outspoken Laos are
hounded and their families harassed.
Creative people like artists and writers,
as well as village heads and civil servants,
undergo intense, repeated political brainwashing
on the virtues of the communist system. While
national leaders continue to define the one party
state as a revolutionary socialist government,
like formerly junta-led Myanmar, Laos shows more
indicators of fascism than socialism with its
flag-waving nationalism, disdain for human rights
and persistent reference to common threats and
foes.
To outsiders, Laos may seem like
communism-lite. But there is no crossing allowed
of those in government whose wealth and power rely
on access to lands and resources for tourism
development. "Don't be fooled by the laid back
nature of Laos. Their secret police were trained
by the Vietnamese who were trained by the [East
German] Stasi. They are not to be f*cked with,"
says one local resident.
Sompawn's and
Sombath's still unexplained disappearances are
testaments to that warning, an advisory more
global travelers should recognize when devising
their itineraries.
Melinda Boh,
a pseudonym, is an independent journalist.
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